The proof is in the proofreading

Kind of a hectic week at ye olde workplace, trying to get out the first edition of a new e-newsletter to alumni and friends of dear old MHC. Although I expect it to get better as we go, I’m fairly happy with the inaugural edition (see the Web version here). Lots of good feedback from the recipients, relatively few “unsubscribes” (more on that, shortly), and because of the newsletter, I heard from a few folks I haven’t heard from in awhile. One of those was a guy who was a student at MHC at the same time I was, who so far has been the only one to point out the glaring error I made. In the email version, which is very slightly different from the Web version linked above, I put a line at the top that read, “If this email does not display properly, click here to open it in a brower” (bold and italics added here). I don’t know if he’s the only one who noticed, or if everyone else just took pity on me. I need to stop proving to myself how hard it is to proofread my own work. There was at least one fairly big error: a broken “unsubscribe” link. Fortunately, the software we use to mail the newsletter also tracks what the recipients do with it, so I can tell who tried to unsubscribe,  and manually remove them from the email database before the next issue. All in all, though, I’d classify this first one as a success.